Rationalizing Multiple Races

[Tanuki Tales]

Something that I've lately been hung up on as I'm putting together a game (and mini-bits of a setting) for my IRL group is the concept of multiple civilized sapient races cohabiting the same continent (or more) to the point of creating the familiar setting that a lot of games use.

When I first started doing table top gaming back when 3.5 edition was released for the Dungeons and Dragons game, I never had thought twice about having a plethora of creatures with cultures brushing elbows with each other in the various media I was exposed to. It was in fact just up until recently that I even began questioning set up, since it was something so common in fiction.

But now I am starting to question the possibility of this happening and find myself trying to find some way to rationalize it or at least do away with it without diluting the flavor all those races brought (something I'm doing in a piece of homebrew concerning a race of "mongrel-folk" descended from humanity).

So, I ask all of you, how do you make it make internal sense in your games without resorting to literal Divine Intervention (the gods made everything and make it so) or having one race being dominant and the rest enslaved? I had read on one site that this could occur if the races didn't fill the same ecological niche, didn't fight for the same resources and were kept separate until they were sufficiently advanced enough to not just automatically try to wipe each other out.

I'm not interested in "don't worry about" or "you're thinking too deep" or any other handwaving ways to make it work.

Thank you in advance for any weighing in anyone does!

[CoffeeIncluded]

We humans are actually the last surviving members of our genus. But what if we weren't? My personal take on it is that all the races--humans, dwarves, orcs, elves, halflings, gnomes, and even goblinoids, are human. Or, to be more accurate, Homo something. At one point we had Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalis, and Homo floresiensis (quite literally hobbits; adult specimens were about three and a half feet tall and 55 pounds) living on the planet at the same time. Now imagine we had more species of the Homo genus. And imagine that none of these species ever went extinct like the Neanderthals and real-life hobbits did.

[Tanuki Tales]

We humans are actually the last surviving members of our genus. But what if we weren't? My personal take on it is that all the races--humans, dwarves, orcs, elves, halflings, gnomes, and even goblinoids, are human. Or, to be more accurate, Homo something. At one point we had Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalis, and Homo floresiensis (quite literally hobbits; adult specimens were about three and a half feet tall and 55 pounds) living on the planet at the same time. Now imagine we had more species of the Homo genus. And imagine that none of these species ever went extinct like the Neanderthals and real-life hobbits did.

But why didn't they go extinct? That's my whole obstacle on this; I can conceptualize more races evolving, but not rationalize how they can have co-existed and got to the point of having neighboring civilizations that didn't wipe each other out.

[CoffeeIncluded]

But why didn't they go extinct? That's my whole obstacle on this; I can conceptualize more races evolving, but not rationalize how they can co-existed and got to the point of having neighboring civilizations that didn't wipe each other out.

Maybe they lived on different continents and any contact has been recent. Maybe they preferred trading or mating or whatever with each other to killing each other for however long it occurred. Maybe there was just never total war.

[Winter_Wolf]

How about convergent evolution? Or parallel evolution (apparently they're different things). Of course that does raise the question, "how is it that humans can interbreed with anything and everything?" At least CoffeeIncluded's approach answers that question as far as most humanoids go.

[Broken Twin]

I know I tend to have the exact same problem when it comes to races. Especially trying to explain why races that are capable of interbreeding are still distinct races after apparently living next to each other for generations.

Personally, I prefer to use sentient races that are completely different to each other. One example I have is in the setting I'm working on right now I have the majority of halflings and treants living together in a culturally symbiotic relationship. The treants taught halflings magic, and in thanks the halflings help tend and protect the treants' forest homes.

I find eliminating the potential for crossbreeding greatly increases the believability of multiple intelligent species co-existing. A dwarf and a human can fall in love and get married, but unless they're adopting they're not having kids. Cities are more 'melting pot' then distinct races, although racial neighbourhoods (ala the stereotypical 'Chinatown') still exist.

Racial relationships vary by culture. In some kindgoms lizardfolk have no rights beyond being pets/slaves, while in others lizardfolk routinely run for and win political positions.

[Tanuki Tales]

Maybe they lived on different continents and any contact has been recent. Maybe they preferred trading or mating or whatever with each other to killing each other for however long it occurred. Maybe there was just never total war.

Once again, why? The reason that the other Homo genus went extinct is currently postulated as interbreeding, while the popular one was that we wiped them out.

I had mentioned above that the only answer I really found was that they need to be kept away for a sufficiently long enough time for genocide not to be the first answer to ensure personal survive.

How about convergent evolution? Or parallel evolution (apparently they're different things). Of course that does raise the question, "how is it that humans can interbreed with anything and everything?" At least CoffeeIncluded's approach answers that question as far as most humanoids go.

I'm not asking "why they came to be", that's easy enough to explain or handwave (no problems handwaving that one), but "why didn't they get wiped out" like we saw on Earth.

[A_Man]

I'm not asking "why they came to be", that's easy enough to explain or handwave (no problems handwaving that one), but "why didn't they get wiped out" like we saw on Earth.

Probably because on Earth, Homo Sapiens were the "best", be it in physical appearance, strength, or intelligence (I'm not certain why exactly homo Sapiens won out, since I've heard that Neanderthals were more intelligent then our species), but in the fantasy world, all the races had specific advantages. The elves lived best in the forests, the dwarves survived best in the mountains, and humans managed to survive by being good in all things.

[Tanuki Tales]

Probably because on Earth, Homo Sapiens were the "best", be it in physical appearance, strength, or intelligence (I'm not certain why exactly homo Sapiens won out, since I've heard that Neanderthals were more intelligent then our species), but in the fantasy world, all the races had specific advantages. The elves lived best in the forests, the dwarves survived best in the mountains, and humans managed to survive by being good in all things.

Then why didn't the Elves or the Dwarves wipe out humanity? They live longer, they're better than humanity in many ways, they had grander societies (stereotypically). Human military targets would be easily wiped out and if the "elder races" ever got a real bug up their bum, then they'd just wipe them out.

If humanity was all around better than Elves or Dwarves, why didn't they wipe them out? If Elves were arrogant, flightly and incapable of looking at the short term, humanity would have been the coffin nail before they recognized them as a threat. If Dwarves were blind to the world outside their mountains, loathe to change or adapt and incapable of giving up on the past, why didn't the more versatile humanity find the holes in their armor and bury them?

And races like Orcs make even less sense if humanity didn't already have sufficient might to not be swept aside when such brutal, physically superior races came to a tribal level.

[Broken Twin]

An easy way to understand why one species hasn't wiped out the others would be to ensure that they thrive in different landscapes. If dwarves are adapted to life underground and humans aren't, they're a lot less likely to fight over land/resources, and it would be difficult for them to wipe each other out. Maybe elves are better adapted to high altitudes, and live on mountaintops where humans have trouble breathing.

[Tanuki Tales]

An easy way to understand why one species hasn't wiped out the others would be to ensure that they thrive in different landscapes. If dwarves are adapted to life underground and humans aren't, they're a lot less likely to fight over land/resources, and it would be difficult for them to wipe each other out. Maybe elves are better adapted to high altitudes, and live on mountaintops where humans have trouble breathing.

I know, that was something I mentioned in the first post (and depending on how different they are, maybe the second one too). And your Halfling/Treant symbiosis falls under the second one, with the two filling non-competing ecological niches. Weren't the Hobbits in the Shire part of a similar relationship too, by the by?

I was just curious if there were answers other than "keep them away from each other till they can play nice" or "don't have them compete for the same resources".

[AuraTwilight]

The existence of gods that are personally invested in specific races REALLY helps to explain a lot of this.

[Tanuki Tales]

The existence of gods that are personally invested in specific races REALLY helps to explain a lot of this.

So, I ask all of you, how do you make it make internal sense in your games without resorting to literal Divine Intervention (the gods made everything and make it so) or having one race being dominant and the rest enslaved?

*polite cough*

[Scow2]

Ecological niches really does nail it, with attempts to

Elves and dwarves dominate the Forests and Mountains, respectively.

If anyone tried to eliminate/subjugate the dwarves, they'd be eating Lava and Steel faster than you can say "Bloody Boatmurdered!" But, they cannot take the Plains very well because of their poor maneuverability. They can pop in and out of holes pretty easily.

Elves dominate the forests. They lack the numbers to mount effective offensive campaigns outside the forests, though - but inside, it's chasing ghosts.

Humans pretty much dominate grasslands and riverways - it's why they're the dominant race in D&D, with Dwarves stuck in the hills and mountains, and Elves stuck in the forests. Of course, it's not so much the humans themselves as their Horses and Dogs.

Gnomes pretty much hide from the world.

Halflings are content to be second-class citizens with Ghostlike avengers.


Another reason why no race becomes absolutely dominant is because there are so damn many of them - a Monopoly cannot form because as soon as one pulls too far ahead, other races band against its expansion until it's pulled back into the pack.

[Erik Vale]

Resoning from my dads world that had divergent evolution and alien explanations for Dragons, Fey, Elves, Dwarves, Giants, Horde [Ocs/Goblins/Ogres/Orgs] and Humans, with divine intervention seeming sporadic.

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First, There were dragons. They are unsocial orrigionally left by aliens and generally live alone in mountains in study/other, this is caused by their unintelligent and viscous youth. Their raw strength means they survive, lack of civilization/numbers ensure they don't dominate [I think we just killed one of 3 in the region, however it seemed to be a rather stupid adult].

Fey are just aliens and live only partially connected to our plane and only regularly interact with the elves [I think].

Elves evolved from magic trees, grew powerful, but were complacent. Similarly for Dwarves but a more normal evolution. Niether of them killed humans because at the time they were no threat, and the Horde were easy to point in the other direction and couldn't organise themselves for more than three minutes as Orgs weren't a thing yet.

Then men get iron + steel [Volcanic Eruption + Luck apperently] and continental shifts have occurred. Men have basically conquered all of themselves [elves and dwarves generally stay out of the way but are widespread], and Horde are only just starting to get their act together. The horde are not even a blip and barely occupy space so:

Humans expand, sheer numbers almost wipe the elves and dwarves and giants out [not sure what's been happening with the giants in the mean time], forcing them back to the recesses of the world to make space for themselves. They have their empires, expansion grinds to a halt [as it does], due to slow repopulation elves/dwarves don't ever get back on the front foot and just sit around. Again, lore is short on the giants.

Org's appear, they organise the horde, the elves/dwarves aren't keeping them in check, the human empires have grown lazy, man is nearly wipped out, the horde kept at bay only by human heroes and very big walls.

Some sort of collapse effects the Org's, the Horde again dissasemble going from Mongolian Empire of doomness minus the horses to stupid barbarians occasionally led by a powerful smart guy. Given that I believe campaigns did happen around now, I guess it's due to a couple of plucky and eventually high powered human heroes, this however occured 1+ thousand years ago.

Humanity begins to rebuild, and are only just pushing back against the horde successfully aside from founding heavily walled cities. Some elves still exist who remember humanities attack, and they can remember events through special books [Alex Ghostwalker has used one of said books, and he would be having a special talk with his mother [ageless family line of natural magicians akin to sorcerers who specialize in teleportation, abberations due to magic are a thing] should he ever contact her], we have only started meeting dwarves so I've no clue there, and Giants are illusive beings occasionally hunted by powerful necromancers who stay well away from everything else. Dragons occasionally rule horde tribes using them to gather subsistence and otherwise ignore them, the one we killed was however going to help wipe out a city in the beginning of a genocidal war we plucky heroes are going to have to help stop.

So, TLSR. Genocide did happen. Reason more than one species live on Orios Humans became lazy, Horde are dumb and disorganised [hunter gatherer level still despite humans having steel and just shy of gunpowder because fantasy] and something handwavy or campaigny happened, and Elves/Dwarves were never in conflict with other races up until humanity muderstomped them, and Dragons have no reason to wipe everybody out.

As for the reason there are more than one horde race, Ogres are really dumb, Orcs are good hunters but not as strong as ogres or as smart as goblins, and goblins while weak and numerous are smart, so they all developed symbiotic relationships, at least, as far as staying away from eachother except to fight/raid humans and fight/enslave each other goes, and Orgs are newish and few in number [For example, there are maybe 30-50 in a army of 10000] despite being powerful magic users.

[Broken Twin]

And your Halfling/Treant symbiosis falls under the second one, with the two filling non-competing ecological niches. Weren't the Hobbits in the Shire part of a similar relationship too, by the by?

Don't think so with the hobbits (I don't think they even knew about the ents until LotR happened), but that's pretty much how it works, yeah. Halflings don't eat treant food and vis-versa, and their massive size difference means that they can assist each other in ways that they can't by themselves. Their settlements are fairly sprawling, with lots of open space and greenery. They tend to follow the rule of "Give what you take", so for every area they cut down for development, another area is planted in kind. Outsiders are treated with respect, but at a distance. They'll trade with you, but don't expect to be able to walk around without a "Helpful Local Guide".

I was just curious if there were answers other than "keep them away from each other till they can play nice" or "don't have them compete for the same resources".

Well, you could always just HAVE them in competition. Have the main groups going at each other (either openly or in a cold war), with smaller groups that intermingle (due to either mutual advantage or other factors).

Edit: I mean, lord knows we still have countries in close proximity to each other that have been fighting each other for a very, very long time. Not really that different from what you're talking about.

[Mr. Mask]

I know I tend to have the exact same problem when it comes to races. Especially trying to explain why races that are capable of interbreeding are still distinct races after apparently living next to each other for generations.

This is, sadly, not a problem. The world, and the single nation of the USA, is composed of many different ethnicities.

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Then why didn't the Elves or the Dwarves wipe out humanity? They live longer, they're better than humanity in many ways, they had grander societies (stereotypically). Human military targets would be easily wiped out and if the "elder races" ever got a real bug up their bum, then they'd just wipe them out.

If humanity was all around better than Elves or Dwarves, why didn't they wipe them out? If Elves were arrogant, flightly and incapable of looking at the short term, humanity would have been the coffin nail before they recognized them as a threat. If Dwarves were blind to the world outside their mountains, loathe to change or adapt and incapable of giving up on the past, why didn't the more versatile humanity find the holes in their armor and bury them?

And races like Orcs make even less sense if humanity didn't already have sufficient might to not be swept aside when such brutal, physically superior races came to a tribal level.

Why didn't the Aztec wipe out the Cherokee? They hated the Cherokee and were powerful. Their power and willingness was not enough (thank God).

[Erik Vale]

This is, sadly, not a problem. The world, and the single nation of the USA, is composed of many different ethnicities.

Whilst for the most part I agree with you, and the problem is kind of dealt with by mongrelfolk fluff [I think, haven't read myself], half-elves/orcs and half X templates, it does rather stretch the imagination a bit that there aren't more half-x's and such available in core.

Of course, for the most part I normally choose not to think of it, generally playing really inhuman races or humans.

[Tvtyrant]

I don't think a created world with racial gods and fiendish incursions really meets our standards for SotF/Darwinism. If the god of Halflings says they won't go extinct, they don't go extinct.

[Mr. Mask]

Erik: You are right in that. My comment was to the point that an ethnic or racial group disappearing from breeding was not a give in, and I dare say unlikely. However you would get some groups interbreeding more likely than not, as you have said.

Depending on the breeding rates and who has how many recessive genes, one race might simply overtake another when interbreeding does occur. Or, you might get ethnicities and races which occur from multiple groups mixing. Honestly, you'd probably get both.

[Erik Vale]

I don't think a created world with racial gods and fiendish incursions really meets our standards for SotF/Darwinism. If the god of Halflings says they won't go extinct, they don't go extinct.

Again with the no-handwavy. The OP is purely interested in reasons that work without handwaving.

However, I am kinda interested in why Deamons [not devils or demons, I know why for those two] haven't banded together to slowly eat sections of the material. Unless they have and we don't hear about it because dead with souls eaten tell no tales.

Erik: You are right in that. My comment was to the point that an ethnic or racial group disappearing from breeding was not a give in, and I dare say unlikely. However you would get some groups interbreeding more likely than not, as you have said.

Depending on the breeding rates and who has how many recessive genes, one race might simply overtake another when interbreeding does occur. Or, you might get ethnicities and races which occur from multiple groups mixing. Honestly, you'd probably get both.

True. Might be why there are no half-dwarves. [Half Dwarves, I think you mean short man or tall dwarf sonny]

[Tvtyrant]

Again with the no-handwavy. The OP is purely interested in reasons that work without handwaving.

However, I am kinda interested in why Deamons [not devils or demons, I know why for those two] haven't banded together to slowly eat sections of the material. Unless they have and we don't hear about it because dead with souls eaten tell no tales.

So we are going to ignore the direct intervention of gods where it is a daily occurrence? (Did we really just hand waive hand-waives?) Because in some settings like Dragonlance it is pretty much the bread and butter of the setting. On the flipside there is Dark Sun where there were decently successful attempts to genocide all none-Halflings.

Depends on the setting, but probably size issues. An individual planet on the Prime in Planescape is so small by comparison to one of the Outer Planes that conquering it would benefit you nearly nothing but may very well cost you everything (no longer considered neutral by everyone else.)

[Broken Twin]

On the subject of demons/devils, I've come to my favorite conclusion that being from outside the material plane are not 'real' in the same sense that material beings are. They exist as concepts brought to life via magic. Sentient races have believed in demons for so long that the magic aether outside of the material plane gave birth to them. Same with gods, extraplanar worlds, and everything else.

I think a big problem with my ability to accept multiple independant species comes from me living in a time where the melting pot culture is the norm (in my area, anyway). When you're used to everything and everyone being so interconnected, it's hard to remember that back then people were a lot more seperated, by land and by culture.

Also, my sense of scale is usually off. I tend to imagine most fantasy worlds as about the size of Great Britian, even if they're actually designed to be much bigger. It's hard to imagine drastically different cultures surviving in close proximity to each other without crossover happening.

[Mr. Mask]

TV: Some settings go with the idea that gods don't occur until later in the setting, when many of the races are already set up.


Erik: If the devils/whatever-you-said don't band together it's likely for similar reasons to why people don't. If it's not, then it'll be due to some quality or circumstance they have.

There are no half-dwarves because Tolkien didn't mention them.


Twin: Well... I can relate to that.

[BWR]

True. Might be why there are no half-dwarves. [Half Dwarves, I think you mean short man or tall dwarf sonny]

Sure there are half-dwarves. They're called muls.

As for the OP, there isn't really any way to excuse the vast amount of D&D creatures living in the same world IRL, not just various intelligent humanoids. If you assume that many of these really nasty monsters and predators live in the same world as RL fauna, they should have by rights out-competed every normal predator.

As for intelligent races, several worlds have a general theme of humanity slowly outbreeding other races, or slowly pushing them back. It's a process that takes a while but one that could easily lead to non-humans being either extinct or near as.
FR, for instance, had for many years the very Tolkien-esque matter of the Elven Retreat, where elves were slowly moving to their own elf-only island that was hidden by magic somewhere far away.
In most of the Known World of Mystara, humans are dominant and most humanoids are forced to live to the nastiest, least hospitable lands in the area. This tends to make the humanoids desperate and vicious, which only strengthens the human/demi-human idea that they are beasts and should be killed.

[Yora]

I don't see a reason why a single intelligent race would be the default assumption. The only somewhat good one is, that higher intelligence is apparently something that evolution creates very rarely.

But historically, our number of known examples comes down to one. And homo sapiens didn't genocidically whipe out neanderthals. That was more a case of a shrinking ecological habitat at the end of the ice age, and assimilation into homo sapiens populations.
Also, humans did treat other ethnicities as different species often enough and still didn't try to exterminate each other most of the time. Those few modern cases we know about didn't even succeed. There was massive depopulation in the Americas, but that wasn't so much because of violence, but an accident causes by a lack of immunities to Euro-Asian-African diseases. And even though the death toll was absolutely massive, it still didn't wipe out the american people, they still exist, though in highly reduced numbers. And this is still a special case, because of the geographic isolation of the Americas from the other continents. It wouldn't happen if the populations had always had contact with each other.

[Kelb_Panthera]

It's really not that surprising.

IRL there are multiple ethnic groups that have lived adjacent to each other for centuries and often still do but none has wiped out its neighbors and often not for lack of trying.

A fantasy setting just replaces the typical divide of ethnicity with a more dramatic divide of species. The fact that those species are nevertheless sapient humanoids makes the difference largely academic with very few exceptions.

If you're actually asking how all these creatures evolved alongside each other; don't. There's nothing but madness down that road. Just accept that the various races creation myths are historical fact and leave it alone. Science and fantasy don't get along all that well.

[Erik Vale]

I would like to rebuff by saying that diseases were deliberately spread to native Americans by Europeans. [Smallpox blankets I think]
A major accidentally spread one [I think] would be the black plague with infested rats travelling by boat from Asia to Europe.

I instead again substitute that the reason real life genocides tend not to succeed are due to laziness [why do I need to go kill more Native Americans when I could instead just laze around in my huge tracts of land that I've already stolen/Why go kill the elves for minimum 20 to 1 death rate when I can laze around in my huge cities], or lack of ability [Nazi vs Jews].

I don't think I've gone to far past the avoid IRL since I'm making no judgements and will proceed no further, however if anyone would like me to remove bits do let me know.

[BMXSummoner]

Well you mentioned many of the reasons in can work in your post, but just to give the topic a full discourse.

1. Because of 'the gods'. The gods want it this way and that's why it is. Either there was no evolution period (where primitive bands killed each other for scarce resources), so everybody got off to a pretty solid start with the gods help and there was no need for scarcity themed genocide, or if there was an evolutionary, the gods helped it along to the point where this never came up.

2. Ecological differences. Taking Humans and Dwarfs (for a stereotypical example), if humans were wanderers over land who built their cities on plains and at rivers, and dwarfs were mountain dwelling people who had half their civilization underground, and the rest next to mountains, chances are the resources to lead a genocide against the other probably were never advantageous enough to be worth it.

3. Distance. If the two don't meet til they can trade and form alliances for mutual benefit (or fear war for mutual loss and destruction), then there probably won't be a genocide.

4. Symbiotic relationships. Lets say one race can kill monsters that attack the 'tribe' and the other has the fine motor skills or intelligence to build agricultural infrastructure, they may need each other to survive. There's a lot of reasons down this line.

5. Slavery. One group bred the other as slaves. Pretty straight forward.

6. Bigger problems. If your world is overrun by giant lizards which snack on these (presumably humanoid) races, then they may just be able to eek out separate existences, and genocide isn't really high on their priority list.

7. No scarcity. If resources are aplenty or at least were aplenty for long enough that these races became entrenched enough to the point where when hard times came genocide wasn't gonna happen, then that 'exterminate the other guys' thing maybe never came up.

8. Rarity. Maybe one race is really rare and sparse, and they just don't take up enough resources to be worth exterminating. If they live really long and are really dangerous (think vampires) then genocide, even if preferable, might not be possible. On the reverse, destroying an entire population 100 times your size probably isn't worth your time, and if they provide you with resources of some kind (continue thinking vampires) then even less so.

9. Late to the party. Maybe one race got to civilization early, and by the time the other was catching up, they didn't feel the need to exterminate them (for moral reasons, or slavery, or they felt no need, or whatever).

10. Genocide isn't easy. Hell, maybe they tried their damnedest to 'kill 'em all', but 'hey, those jerks just won't die'. Wiping out an entire race isn't exactly 'easy'.

11. Evolution was a bit different. Maybe this version of evolution just got to the 'play nice' part pretty fast. Or at least the part where, 'Hey. Lets just trade with these guys instead of killing them all.' Why not? It's your world. We have a rough idea of how one species, 'homo sapiens', came to power, and some conflicting theories on one potential competitor. It's a real tough call to say racial genocide is an evolutionary must based on just one example (and more of a 'maybe' example at that).

That's just off the top of my head. I would think that some combination of these is available for your setting, but if not, well, tough call without a lot more info.

I know I tend to have the exact same problem when it comes to races. Especially trying to explain why races that are capable of interbreeding are still distinct races after apparently living next to each other for generations.

I don't think it's that hard. Africa and Europe are not so far apart, and yet we still very much have 'Africans' and 'Europeans'. Cultural ties can be a very strong thing, and at that, because it's your world, they can be as strong as you want them to be (ex: Dwarfs who mate with humans are exiled, or executed, or shunned, or whatever else you like best. Or maybe they generally just don't 'do it' for each other.)

Beyond that maybe only 1/10 (or 1/100, or 1/1000, or whatever) matches between a human and a dwarf result in a pregnancy, or result in a living birth. Or maybe they're extremely susceptible to birth disorders, or some special disease, or a regular disease, or they all get incredible magic powers and go insane. Whatever you like best.

I think it's important to remember when building a world that you can write any rule you want, and with enough creativity you can explain anything, no hand-waving needed. You might to go back some and rewrite some typical conventions and assumptions from our world, or introduce a lot of new elements, but 'doesn't immediately make sense' shouldn't be an answer, it should be a starting point.

[Mastikator]

You can't take a world based on the concept that divine intervention is practically mundane, take that very intervention away and then ask how it makes sense.

It's like kicking down the legs of a chair and then wondering why it still doesn't stand.

I would not try to make it make internal sense without divine intervention. If I can take out the divine intervention of the equation then I must also change the result of the equation.
And the only way multiple sapient species exist is if they are restricted from accessing each other.
The dwarves for example NEVER leave their subterranean homes, and nobody else can survive down there. Any middle ground between dwarves and any other race is quickly squashed by both sides.
Most "evil" races don't exist anymore, no orcs or goblins or ogres or trolls, they have all been wiped out.
Elves are probably wiped out too by the quick breeding humans. Gnomes are wiped out by dwarves. Halflings are either enslaved by humans or wiped out.

Either that or the humans were wiped out by some other dominating species.